You're right. But I think the Soviet collapse was primarily economic - they couldn't think of any way to compete without abandoning communism. Reagan's SDI helped tremendously - the Soviets were always good at math and chess, and calculated that even 100% of their GDP couldn't match what Reagan wanted to spend. Checkmate.
If you have nuclear weapons and a fearsome secret police, what difference does it make for the leaders if they "can't compete" with the West? See North Korea.
But the troops and even the secret police might not be so keen about leaving their barracks if they aren't being paid enough, especially if the angry subjects they are supposed to repress decide that they have little to lose by resisting the regime.
The amazing thing about the collapse of the Soviet bloc was how paralyzed the whole apparatus of repression was across multiple states. As I recall, Romania was the only country where the secret police (but not the army) killed a lot of protesters. The initial massacre in a provincial town only accelerated the collapse of the regime when the dictator organized a rally at the main square in Bucharest, only to have the crowd turn against him on live TV with shots being fired at a part of it, forcing a brief interruption of the speech ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWIbCtz_Xwk ). Afterwards, there was chaos in the streets ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qe08_sQ0GMM ) with the defiant crowds chanting the name of the town. The dictator and his wife were on the run briefly, but after they were caught it took only about an hour to try and execute them--again all captured on live TV ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F7ibY7Pjo8 ).
The lesson here is that a dictator and his loyal secret police, however fearsome, can be defeated by the populace if it is angry and determined enough. You'll also observe how much economic concerns were driving the Romanian dictator's discourse, especially when he resumed the speech after the interruption and tried to bribe his subjects with promises of increases in social welfare benefits.
Accusing Rothbard of being an unfriendly guy lacking in personal integrity simply because of all the factional break-ups he got involved in begs the question of who the bad guys in each of those episodes were and how true friends ought to treat each other.
Who was guilty of being unfriendly and lacking integrity when the Volker Fund suppressed the anti-statist chapters from Rothbard's _Man, Economy, and State_, or when Ayn Rand purged Rothbard from her Objectivist "Collective" after attempting to put Rothbard's wife on trial for being Catholic, or when Cato Institute Director Ed Crane purged Rothbard from the Cato Institute (of which Rothbard was a co-founder of and shareholder in) for being too radical in his writings and for not being subservient enough to Cato's financial backers, namely the Koch brothers?
The common thread running through these conflicts and in Chapter 15 is Rothbard's conviction that the non-aggression principle rises to the level of being a virtue that one should never compromise nor be ashamed of advocating. The implications of this are that one can't excuse aggression on the grounds that a particular aggressor happens to be one's friend, or on the grounds that legalizing the victimization of some people might serve to prevent the victimization of others that one cares more about. A true friend of an aggressor would urge that aggressor to make amends for his rights-violations and assist him in compensating his victims, not manufacture excuses to help him get away with the crime.
If compromising with your friend in a joint effort to bake bread means settling for half a loaf instead of getting a full loaf (which you believe would be the case if your friend could be persuaded to your point of view), it would be counterproductive to get no loaf at all because of a stubborn refusal to compromise. On the other hand, if compromising means settling for a poisoned loaf, you would be better off not cooperating with him and getting no loaf instead. You don't have to be nasty about your non-cooperation, but you do have to insist that your friend respect your judgement about whether the joint effort serves your interests or not. One isn't really your friend if they don't accord you such respect.
Just as you are not morally obligated to poison yourself to please your friends, you are not morally obligated to participate in a joint criminal enterprise to please them either. One doesn't grow one's circle of friends by making enemies out of strangers by harming them.
I'm not claiming that Rothbard and his allies were nice people. On the contrary, I observed first hand that he could be really nasty, and some of his allies (especially Raimondo) even more so--I was in the anti-Rothbard faction of the LP back in the early 1980s, and was well aware of what he was doing.
That's not the issue raised by Chapter 15 and Bryan's criticism of it though. The issue here is whether or not you should support the initiation of harm against strangers just to please your friends within some organization. That sort of amoral loyalty to one's political tribe may make life within the tribe more pleasant and facilitate consensus-building within it, but only at the price of making unnecessary enemies out of the strangers the tribe is harming. From a libertarian point of view, that is a bad bargain.
I do not understand what you mean by a "tent." Apparently, I am supposed to view mankind as consisting in two disjoint groups: those in the "tent" with me, and The Other. But by what criterion am I to make this distinction? In reality, there is a continuum in my willingness to listen to various people, in my eagerness to persuade various people of this or that thesis, in my enjoyment of various people's company, etc. If there is a "tent" here, I do not see it.
There is an older example than the Marxists...Robespierre in the French Revolution bounced back and forth between executing the left and the right, trying for a perfect purity of thought.
You're right. But I think the Soviet collapse was primarily economic - they couldn't think of any way to compete without abandoning communism. Reagan's SDI helped tremendously - the Soviets were always good at math and chess, and calculated that even 100% of their GDP couldn't match what Reagan wanted to spend. Checkmate.
If you have nuclear weapons and a fearsome secret police, what difference does it make for the leaders if they "can't compete" with the West? See North Korea.
Eventually even the secret police start to envy the living standards in other places. Then things fall apart.
But the troops and even the secret police might not be so keen about leaving their barracks if they aren't being paid enough, especially if the angry subjects they are supposed to repress decide that they have little to lose by resisting the regime.
The amazing thing about the collapse of the Soviet bloc was how paralyzed the whole apparatus of repression was across multiple states. As I recall, Romania was the only country where the secret police (but not the army) killed a lot of protesters. The initial massacre in a provincial town only accelerated the collapse of the regime when the dictator organized a rally at the main square in Bucharest, only to have the crowd turn against him on live TV with shots being fired at a part of it, forcing a brief interruption of the speech ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWIbCtz_Xwk ). Afterwards, there was chaos in the streets ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qe08_sQ0GMM ) with the defiant crowds chanting the name of the town. The dictator and his wife were on the run briefly, but after they were caught it took only about an hour to try and execute them--again all captured on live TV ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F7ibY7Pjo8 ).
The lesson here is that a dictator and his loyal secret police, however fearsome, can be defeated by the populace if it is angry and determined enough. You'll also observe how much economic concerns were driving the Romanian dictator's discourse, especially when he resumed the speech after the interruption and tried to bribe his subjects with promises of increases in social welfare benefits.
Why do you think China will become much freer in the next 30 years? Are you talking about political freedom or further economic freedom?
> China is going to be much freer in 30 years — I’ll bet on it.
It has been over 17 years since you blogged that at https://www.econlib.org/archives/2009/05/econlog_book_cl_17.html so how do you think your bet would have been holding up?
Accusing Rothbard of being an unfriendly guy lacking in personal integrity simply because of all the factional break-ups he got involved in begs the question of who the bad guys in each of those episodes were and how true friends ought to treat each other.
Who was guilty of being unfriendly and lacking integrity when the Volker Fund suppressed the anti-statist chapters from Rothbard's _Man, Economy, and State_, or when Ayn Rand purged Rothbard from her Objectivist "Collective" after attempting to put Rothbard's wife on trial for being Catholic, or when Cato Institute Director Ed Crane purged Rothbard from the Cato Institute (of which Rothbard was a co-founder of and shareholder in) for being too radical in his writings and for not being subservient enough to Cato's financial backers, namely the Koch brothers?
The common thread running through these conflicts and in Chapter 15 is Rothbard's conviction that the non-aggression principle rises to the level of being a virtue that one should never compromise nor be ashamed of advocating. The implications of this are that one can't excuse aggression on the grounds that a particular aggressor happens to be one's friend, or on the grounds that legalizing the victimization of some people might serve to prevent the victimization of others that one cares more about. A true friend of an aggressor would urge that aggressor to make amends for his rights-violations and assist him in compensating his victims, not manufacture excuses to help him get away with the crime.
If compromising with your friend in a joint effort to bake bread means settling for half a loaf instead of getting a full loaf (which you believe would be the case if your friend could be persuaded to your point of view), it would be counterproductive to get no loaf at all because of a stubborn refusal to compromise. On the other hand, if compromising means settling for a poisoned loaf, you would be better off not cooperating with him and getting no loaf instead. You don't have to be nasty about your non-cooperation, but you do have to insist that your friend respect your judgement about whether the joint effort serves your interests or not. One isn't really your friend if they don't accord you such respect.
Just as you are not morally obligated to poison yourself to please your friends, you are not morally obligated to participate in a joint criminal enterprise to please them either. One doesn't grow one's circle of friends by making enemies out of strangers by harming them.
One toxic relationship is the other guy's fault. Multiple and time to look in the mirror.
I'm not claiming that Rothbard and his allies were nice people. On the contrary, I observed first hand that he could be really nasty, and some of his allies (especially Raimondo) even more so--I was in the anti-Rothbard faction of the LP back in the early 1980s, and was well aware of what he was doing.
That's not the issue raised by Chapter 15 and Bryan's criticism of it though. The issue here is whether or not you should support the initiation of harm against strangers just to please your friends within some organization. That sort of amoral loyalty to one's political tribe may make life within the tribe more pleasant and facilitate consensus-building within it, but only at the price of making unnecessary enemies out of the strangers the tribe is harming. From a libertarian point of view, that is a bad bargain.
I believe his wife was Methodist rather than Catholic.
There's a saying: "If you meet one asshole in a day, you met an asshole. If you meet assholes all day, you're the asshole."
I do not understand what you mean by a "tent." Apparently, I am supposed to view mankind as consisting in two disjoint groups: those in the "tent" with me, and The Other. But by what criterion am I to make this distinction? In reality, there is a continuum in my willingness to listen to various people, in my eagerness to persuade various people of this or that thesis, in my enjoyment of various people's company, etc. If there is a "tent" here, I do not see it.
There is an older example than the Marxists...Robespierre in the French Revolution bounced back and forth between executing the left and the right, trying for a perfect purity of thought.